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Abstract
The sugar and alcohol sector has seen huge growth in recent years in Brazil; however, maintenance in this industry comes at a high cost due to loss of metal from the equipment via wear mechanisms. The objective of this work is to evaluate the abrasive wear resistance and the microstructure of hard claddings deposited in a single layer. Four types of consumables are used in the sugar and alcohol industry: a clad electrode of FeCrC alloy, 4.0 mm of diameter and three self-shielded tubular wires, all 1.6 mm in diameter, of FeCrC, FeCrCNb and FeCrCTiMo alloys. The base metal used was SAE1020 steel. The welds with the tubular wires were produced in short circuit transfer mode, with the same welding current and voltage values. For the wear test a rubber wheel was used, in accordance with ASTM standard G65-91. The wear test pieces were removed from the central region of the test plates, and from the same region two groups of samples were removed for microstructural analysis (under an optical microscope). The results of the tests with the rubber wheel showed that the FeCrCNb alloy had the highest wear resistance, followed by the clad electrode, and the FeCrCMoTi alloy and FeCrC alloy had the worst performance. The FeCrC alloy (for both the clad electrode and for the tubular wire) showed a microstructure formed by M7C3 primary carbonates distributed in a matrix of lower hardness; the alloy containing Nb showed a similar microstructure as well as the presence of NbC carbonates; in turn, the alloy with Ti and Mo added revealed the presence of large primary titanium carbonates.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their thanks to the institutions that supported them in carrying out this work (CNPq, CAPES, FAPEMIG, CEFET-GO and UFU).